Tuesday Tastings

An abbreviated version thereof, as Bobby D. and your humble blogger are getting in one last round before my departure Thursday.

Open Stuff - The Monday of Open week has it's own tradition, namely this:

That guy ceding possession would have us believe that all is well in Jordan-world:

"But my game feels good. I needed a break. I was kind of dragging along, cut-line golf for a while, and playing a pretty heavy schedule, and I needed to kind of get away from the game, which I did. 

"An Open Championship requires a lot of feel and imagination, and I think that's what I need. I'd gotten very technical, very into making everything perfect, instead of playing the way I normally play. So this week you don't know how far the ball is necessarily going to go off the tee. You need to play the spots, and then you have to use your imagination from there. Hold the ball. Ride the wind." 

Play the bounces. Pack a ski cap. Find your ball. Mark your ball. Avoid the bunkers. Take your medicine. Sharpen your tees. Accept bad bounces. Slug those uphill putts. Chart the port-a-johns. Also the leaderboards. Count your clubs. And your blessings. Jordan Spieth is wrapping up his reign as the champion golfer of the year, unless he's not. Either way, you think he's worried?

He may well not be worried, but others are on his behalf.

John Feinstein has an open....err, excuse me, Open love letter to the Open.  As you might have heard, it's the oldest of golf's championships:

I like to remind people that the first Masters was played in 1934—a mere SEVENTY-FOUR YEARS after the first Open Championship.

And this from a guy that adapted to the Open quite well:

The best description I ever heard of why the Open Championship is unlike any other came from Tom Watson, unofficially an honorary Scot after winning the championship five times and coming within inches of a sixth win nine years ago at the age of 59. 

Tommy Armour from his 1931 title.

“Golf in Great Britain is like baseball in the States,” he once said to me. “Even if you don’t play baseball, you grow up understanding it. You can tell the difference between a routine play and a great play. You know when you’ve seen something special. 

“That’s the way golf is in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Even if you don’t play it regularly as an adult, you understand it. The fans there go to tournaments to watch golf—not sit in a corporate tent and tell people they saw some star go past. They come to watch golf. They appreciate golf. They know that sometimes a shot that ends up 30 feet from the hole is a lot more impressive than a shot that ends up 10 feet. 

“As a player, you feel it; you feel their understanding of the game and their ability to understand how hard the game really is to play.”

John, I think it is pretty much official by now...Heck, they were even nice to him at Gleneagles in 2014.

 But this is just plain wrong:

Links courses need to be protected by the weather. That’s why the Scots say, ‘if it’s nae wind and nae rain, it’s nae golf.’ 

There will be nae tricking up of the golf courses. If the weather’s benign this week at Carnoustie, the winning score will be something close to the seven-under par that Harrington and Sergio Garcia shot to play off in 2007. If there’s rain and wind, it will likely be closer to the six-over that Paul Lawrie, Justin Leonard and Jean Van de Velde played off at after Van de Velde’s infamous Sunday 18th hole triple-bogey.

has John already sent Inspector Dawson's "treatment" down the memory hole....  I suggest he check out the whirlpool bunkers he added to the second hole on the Old Course... and about that stoppage for wind in 2015?

Quibbles aside, his larger point is true enough, the R&A does seem more hands-off in allowing the scoring to be determined by weather conditions....

This guy is getting some love as a pick to win the event, but folks are ill-served if they over-interpret  a certain data point:

CARNOUSTIE, Scotland—Just nine months ago Tommy Fleetwood took arguably the

toughest track in the Open Championship rota and made it look ordinary, shooting a course-record 63 at Carnoustie during his second round at the European Tour’s annual Dunhill Links Championship. 

Ordinarily, it would be a confidence-boosting moment for the 27-year-old Englishman as he returns to the Scottish links to play in this week’s Open, particularly, too, after shooting a closing 63 in the U.S. Open at another tricky course, Shinnecock Hills, last month. Except the Carnoustie that Fleetwood—and the rest of the Open field—will see this week is far different from anything they’ve previous faced. Dry conditions over the last five weeks have created a firmer-and-faster course than anything seen in October at the Dunhill, or during the last two Opens played at Carnoustie in 1999 and 2007.

On the flip side, I expect he'll still own that record on Monday.

Lastly, does the UK not have laws governing elder abuse?

It's been a bit of an off year for Aussie Adam Scott, who has recorded only one top ten finish on the PGA Tour thus far this season, but the 2013 Masters champion has had

several close calls at the British Open over the years, and pulling a veteran caddie out of retirement for the week may be just the boost his game needs. 

According to the Australian Associated Press, Scott has tapped legendary Swedish caddie Fanny Sunesson to carry his bag at Carnoustie, having recently parted with former bagman David Clark.

He's making an old woman carry his luggage?  I though he was raised better than that....

Tiger Scat -  The man finally comments on the silly-money match with Phil:

"We are still working on it," Woods said. "It's not there yet, but certainly we are working on it and trying to make it happen."

Kind of passive, no?  Is it me or does he sound wishy-washy?

As to Patrick Reed's suggestion that they play for their own money:

"Well, of course that's what he would like to see," Woods said, smiling. "I would like to see him put up that money."

"It's a ridiculous amount of money," he said. "No matter how much money you have, this amount will take both of us out of our comfort zone."

They're really milking that "comfort zone" talking point, but how tight will the collars actually be?  I have little doubt that they'll want to win just for the bragging rights, but the money seems the least of it...

Alex Myers has a useful lists of Tiger prop bets:

Tiger Woods makes cut

Yes -350

No +250 

Tiger Woods wins

Yes +2400

No -2900 

Tiger Woods finishes top 5

Yes +600

No -900

Tiger Woods finishes top 10

Yes +270

No -400 

Tiger Woods finishes top 20

Yes +140

No -170 

Tiger Woods finishing position

Over 25.5 (-115)

Under 25.5 (-115) 

Tiger Woods lowest round

Over 69.5 (-110)

Under 69.5 (-120) 

Tiger Woods highest round

Over 75.5 (-110)

Under 75.5 (-120) 

Tiger Woods highest score on any hole

Over 7 (-110)

Under 7 (-120)

Tiger Woods total double bogeys or worse

Over 3 (-110)

Under 3 (-120) 

Tiger Woods within 5 strokes of lead during final round

Yes +225

No -300

 Three double bogeys?  He's got that in his bag, at least assuming he'll play all four days....

Hogan, Reimagined? - John Barton has an odd item in Golf Digest about the Hogan mystique, though he never actually gets around to the reimagining promised in the header.  It's a fairly good primer on the life and times of Hogan, including this bit about Carnoustie:

Carnoustie 

The Scots invented the word dour perhaps to describe some of its sleepy seaside towns like Carnoustie, whose granite-gray high street is visited by howling North Sea winds and other brutal meteorological conditions for which, again, only Scottish words will do: dreich, snell, drookit, fret. Carnoustie was the kind of place young men couldn’t wait to leave: for a night out in Dundee, a job down south in London perhaps, or maybe even a new life in America. When the PGA of America was founded, in 1916, nearly half of the 82 pros were Scottish emigrés from these parts.

It does seem as if Scottish and Yiddish were separated at birth, no?  But this is the grimmest of the Open venues, but quite perfect for Hogan's one appearance.

And this about that amazing week in 1953:

However, in July 1953, with the nation still on its knees from World War II—meat was still being rationed—an American visitor came to town. He was no ordinary tourist. Ben Hogan was making his first and only appearance in the Open Championship. That spring, he had won the Masters by five strokes and then the U.S. Open by six. His arrival in Carnoustie was a visitation, an apparition akin to Captain Cook landing on the shores of Hawaii two centuries before (but with a happier outcome). He was elegant, stylish, cool. There were tales of expensive cashmere long johns. 

"He was a total mystery,” says Peter Alliss, who finished the week tied ninth. “He was from another planet. We were all in awe of him. He had an aura.” 

Carnoustie is easily the toughest of the British Open courses: long, unrelenting, unforgiving. Dour. The perfect choice for Hogan. Over four rounds, with little fuss or fanfare, he skillfully took the links apart. When he chipped in for a birdie on the fifth hole in the last round, en route to a 68 and a four-stroke win, he didn’t even smile. The Scots took to Hogan because he was understated, muted, polite. The quiet American.

I've long thought that the Scots saw a bit of themselves in Hogan.  But I'm always reminded of Hogan's kindness to Jack Fleck, in whom he no doubt saw a kindred spirit.  

That he could go over only the once and win remains quite an achievement, testimony to his greatness.  The rest is really mere pop psychology....

I Blame Greg Norman - Alarmingly, he's not the only Aussie with a penchant for public displays.  I recommend that anyone planning to eat soon skip this item....or perhaps, ever:

Has Greg Norman started a movement? 

Just two weeks after the Australian golf star bared it all for ESPN's Body Issue, an Australian nudist couple, Bruce Jensen and Julie Jarvie, hosted the first Wandering Bears Nude Golf Day at Humpty Doo Golf Club, according to Northern Territory News. 

Jensen, who owns the nearby Brujul Nude Retreat, is a regular player at Humpty Doo, and realized that the relatively quiet setting would allow him to make a public course go fully-privates.

But this being Oz, they've got the white sock thing going:

Can you even buy no-show socks there?  Are there any nudists under the age of 70?